Conventionally, it has been provided a transport apparatus that conveys an article placed in a trough. An example of such a transport apparatus includes an electromagnetic feeder (refer to Patent Document 1).
The electromagnetic feeder disclosed in Patent Document 1 conveys an article placed in a trough by vibrating the trough with an electromagnet in the direction of the vector summation of the vertical direction and the conveyance direction. Also, this electromagnetic feeder is configured such that the trough can be removed for the purpose of cleaning and the like.
However, the conventional transport apparatus disclosed in the above patent document has a following problem.
Specifically, the transport apparatus disclosed in the above patent document employs a mechanism, which uses an electromagnet to provide great acceleration that exceeds the gravity acceleration in the direction of the vector summation of the vertical direction and the conveyance direction in order to vibrate the trough. Therefore, in order to reliably transmit vibration to an article to be conveyed, the apparatus is provided with a lock mechanism to rigidly secure the trough so that the trough does not become detached from a support member.
Consequently, removal of the trough of the conventional transport apparatus mentioned above requires at least two steps, i.e., releasing the lock mechanism and removing the trough. Therefore, removal of the trough is far from easy.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a transport apparatus which enables a trough to be easily removed in one step, and a combination weighing apparatus provided with the transport apparatus.
<Patent Document 1>
Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. H7-285637 (Published on Oct. 31, 1995)
<Patent Document 2>
Japanese Published Patent Application No. 2000-506482 (Published on May 30, 2000)